The sweetpotato (Ipomaea batata) is an economical and healthful food crop that contains high beta-carotene and substantial amounts of ascorbic acid and minerals. Yet, only a limited amount of sweetpotato production is utilized for processing into canned roots, canned puree, patties, and baby foods. At present, the main market form of sweetpotatoes is fresh roots for home cooking, which usually required considerable preparation time. Moreover, the quality of cooked sweetpotatoes can vary due to varietal differences, growing conditions, and postharvest handling practices. These facts pose a serious problems to the sweetpotato industry, which has been declining.
In order to fully exploit the potential of sweetpotatoes, development of new food products that require minimal home preparation and meet the preferences of today's consumers is, therefore, necessary. With the availability of food ingredients possessing various functionalities, convenience products from meat (G. R. Schmidt and W. J. Means, 1986, U.S. Pat. No. 4,603,054), fruits (K. Hannigan in Food Engineering, 1983, 55:48) and Irish potatoes (J. E. Citti and C. S. Dienst, 1980, U.S. Pat. No. 4,198,437) have been developed. M. A. Padula (1987) disclosed a method for producing structured potato french fries, string or has browns using alginate. Products made with alginate, which require the addition of calcium ions to trigger gelling, can often have a bitter taste that limits the products' acceptance by consumers.
Until now, advances in food ingredient technology have not been applied to sweetpotatoes. Sweetpotatoes are well suited for use in more types of structured products than any other high beta-carotene vegetables. It would be particularly desirable to use sweetpotatoes as a substitute for the extremely popular American french fry product made from Idaho potatoes. There is an unmet need for healthful, tasty products made from sweetpotatoes.